Tim Johnson: And now, a personal note

Aug. 4, 2012

Written by

Free Press Staff Writer

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My family has had a rather primitive summer place in the northern Wisconsin woods for about a century, and for most of that time, two outhouses were part of the package. “The East End,” we called them — “the E,” for short.

A path diverged through the woods. One branch led to the boys’, the other to the girls’. The two Es were painted yellow and easy to find in the dark. These were outhouses in the classical sense – pit privies.

Mother: “Where’s Tim?”

Brother: “Headed for the E, last I saw him.”

What does my memory of outhouses in Wisconsin have to do with outhouses in Vermont? Plenty.

Wisconsin and Vermont outhouses operated on exactly the same principle. (Vermont exceptionalism does not apply, for once.) Same climate, more or less. (I’ll get to the winter in a minute.) The prevailing architecture was similar and unmistakable: Slanted roofs and screened vents were popular upscale features.

In both states, you had your one-holers and your two-holers, with three-holers here and there for young families. (The East End had two-holers.) And of course, both Wisconsin and Vermont are and were dairy states, so the outhouse inputs undoubtedly were very similar, too.

I asked my father for a reminiscence. The pits were fairly shallow in the 1930s and had to be emptied regularly, a boyhood task he didn’t much care for. I was spared that duty, because by the time I was growing up, the pits were much deeper and lasted for several years before they had to be re-dug.

“The decay of the pit contents created some warmth for animals in the winter,” my father wrote, “and sometimes when we arrived in June we’d find that a skunk or a woodchuck had taken up residence in a privy and stayed there after the weather was warmer.”

Even after the skunk had moved out, a visit to the E presented an unpleasant choice. You could either leave the door open — and battle the mosquitoes — or close the door and put up with a more intense smell. At our feet there was a bucket of lime, and we were expected to sprinkle it in the hole to contain the stench.

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My father reminded me that the E always had toilet paper but that the outhouses at nearby farms typically made use of the previous year’s Sears Roebuck catalog or last week’s newspaper.

I once had a political science professor who suggested that the United States might most effectively win over the rest of the world by sending Sears Roebuck catalogs overseas in massive quantities, as a testament to the superior quality of life here. I couldn’t help but wonder if that propaganda ploy would be more effective, or less, if the rest of the world knew that Americans used Sears Roebuck catalogs in their outhouses.

It was about 1975 before flush toilets were installed in our cottage (“camp” in Vermont argot), but the E was still was put to use afterward, especially when teenagers monopolized the indoor bathroom. Finally a summer came when the last pits were filled in and covered over. My cousins planned a celebration. They burned the outhouses in a bonfire. I was invited, but I couldn’t make it.

Just as well, because I didn’t really approve. I sort of missed the East End, but not that much.